Does Marriage Counseling Work? Answer These 3 Questions Before You Call a Counselor

That depends on you as a couple and how open and honest you are willing to be about what is truly going on in your marriage. So before you go to make that call to a couple's counselor, each of you needs to answer these questions.
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do we communicate with each other?
If you're being truthful your answer is likely going to be a very low number. Couples who communicate well rarely need outside help or have marital problems that can't be resolved between the two of them. Couples with poor communication skills often have trouble verbalizing what they are really feeling. They will fight about things that are inconsequential because they are frustrated about something else that they either can't easily identify or can't or won't communicate to their spouse. If you're not willing or able to communicate effectively, then asking the question, "Does marriage counseling work?" is going to have the answer of "Maybe, but it will take a very long time."
So before you call a marriage counselor and if you are willing to do the work yourself, try this. Have each person write down three to five things that they truly want from their partner that they don't think they're getting. Take a day or two or even a week if you need it to help you have to time to contemplate and identify exactly where you are having problems in your marriage.
2. What is my core complaint?
If you identify sex, it's likely that you simply want your partner to spend more time with you. It's that you want them to be in the moment with you when you're making love rather than doing it out of obligation, to satisfy a physical need or, perhaps, not having sex with you at all. You want to feel loved, cherished, and desired. Therefore you must communicate to your spouse specifically what they need to do to make you feel that way.
Did you write down money? Again, that goes to communication. You need to sit down together and create a reasonable budget and work toward sticking to it to meet your financial goals and obligations. Money problems often arise because one person is spending too much money and the other partner isn't communicating why they can't spend as much. They'll just say, "Don't buy anything else. We can't afford it," rather than saying, "We need to control our spending. We have $5,000 worth of bills and only $4,000 in the bank. We need to figure out where we can cut back and get the rest of the money."
If you create a budget together then you both can understand the needs for limitations and reductions of your expenditures.
Did you write parenting? Hopefully you discussed your parenting philosophy before you had children, but if you didn't, it's not too late to start. Again, this will require communication and possibly compromise if you have different views on how your children should be raised.
If you can get to your core complaint and work on it, then to the question of "Does marriage counseling work?" the answer will be "Yes, it can." But if you've already identified the problem and are working on it, do you really need outside counseling?
3. What do we fight about?
If what you're fighting about is something mundane, step back before you say something in anger and ask yourself, "Will I really care about this next week or next year? If you do this, you can probably avoid a lot of silly fights. When you fight over minor things, often what you're really asking is, "Why don't you respect me enough to help me?" If you were to ask that question rather than complaining about something of little importance, chances are your spouse would look at the situation in an entirely different light.
Will marriage counseling work? It's up to you to decide how open and honest your can be with each other before you make that call to a counselor or deciding if counseling is even necessary.